Crossair Flight
LX 3597 was an Avro
RJ100 regional airliner, registration HB-IXM, on a scheduled
flight from Berlin, Germany to Zurich, Switzerland that crashed during its
approach to land at Zurich
International Airport on November 24, 2001. Twenty-four of the
thirty-three people on board were killed.[1]

The flight departed Berlin-Tegel International Airport at 9:01
PM CET, upon arrival in Zurich about
an hour later it was cleared to approach runway 28 in poor
visibility conditions due to low clouds. At 10:07 PM CET the plane
crashed into a wooded range of hills near the small town of Bassersdorf some 4
kilometers (2.5 miles) short of the runway, where it broke apart
and went up in flames. Of the 33 people onboard (28 passengers and
5 crew), 24 died (among them the cockpit crew), and nine—seven
passengers and two flight attendants—survived. The lead singer of
the Eurodance group La
Bouche, Melanie Thornton, was one of the dead.
The German pop group Passion Fruit was also aboard; two
of the singers died, the third singer and manager of the band
survived with injuries.[2]

The investigation concluded that the accident was a controlled flight into
terrain caused by the captain deliberately descending below the
minimum descent altitude (MDA) without having the required visual
contact with either the approach lights or the runway;[1]
and the copilot making no attempt to prevent the continuation of
the flight below the minimum descent altitude. The report revealed
that the pilot had failed to perform correct navigation and landing
procedures before, but no action had been taken by the airline.[1]

The investigation report states that other factors also
contributed to the accident: the range of hills the plane crashed
into was not marked in the Jeppesen approach chart used by the crew,
despite the hilly terrain the approach to runway 28 was not
equipped with a minimum safe altitude warning (MSAW) system, which
triggers an alarm if a minimum safe altitude is violated, and the
airport's means of determining visibility were inadequate for
runway 28 and the visual minimums at the time of the accident were
actually inappropriate for using the standard approach to runway
28.[3]